i did it myself. if i had simply done a subpar job and others were able to make it evenly lit, i would feel differently. every one i've seen is worse than OEM... and paying someone else to do it is ridiculous, how much money do you want to waste on having LED lighting?

but that wasn't my point. my point was why do it besides 'it looks cool'?

halogen lamps are a subset of incandescent. most if not all interior lamps are not halogen, they are incandescent and low power.

if you think blue light looks nice, that's fine... but you should realize that there are only a handful of reasons why LEDs are 'better' and none of those apply to a car that was designed for incandescents in the first ten years of use.

1. longevity
led's last a long time when they are high quality and shielded from the elements properly. when they're not, they do fail and generally the super cheap ones are cheap for a reason- high quality costs more.

2. power usage
led's are very efficient, and don't have as much thermal output so more of the input gets converted to light. however, the power usage has to be specifically designed into the eletrical system. if you just place an LED into a system that is used to pulling the type of power a small, efficient incandescent bulb pulls, it will likely not use any less power, especially with a resistor, the resistor will eat up the rest of the power. that's its job.

3. looks/aethetic
leds have a different wavelength and spectrum and generally a different quality of light to them. they are generally lower in spectrum coverage as most of these 'cool white' leds are just blue leds with some nasty chemical filters over them to make them appear whiter. i say nasty because the ways they make these are more noxious and toxic even than incandescents, which require tons of mining and toxic manufacturing themselves. a lot of people don't like the yellowish white of an incandescent because it gives a calmer, more 'fire-like' dim feeling, even if it's not dimmer.

the thing is... the car is designed for a particular type of bulb. putting in LEDs to an incandescent system can work quite well but it can also be a HUGE problem with spotty/uneven gauges and intense light that is generally counter-productive to night vision and being able to see well outside of the car.

longevity: incandescent lights are such low power, they're going to last ten years or more. they will be cheap to replace. you can replace them one at a time. you aren't going to have to worry about their quality because they're oem. LED's can fail at any time just from getting too hot. maybe you leave your heater on and just because of how the air is blowing inside the cabin, it fries your leds. or maybe not. but this isn't a reason to do a conversion, especially less than five years off the lot.

power usage - not going to help. the alternator's draw isn't going to be affected, there are no noticeable energy savings.

looks - i think it looks dumb. at worst, you will have lights that fail without warning and you won't be able to adjust brightness the way you can with incandescents. at best, you have blue lights. gross.

So why do people like this? because you want to have a high end bmw? so stupid. I did an LED conversion on my impreza, it's the worst thing i've done and i'm very unhappy with it. gauges are all sorts of unevenly lit, and one led went out near the HVAC.

also, for LED fog lights i'd be concerned about color rendering indexes, even those CREE XM-L will have a very hard time cutting through fog and it will be harder to see by them through fog conditions.
unless, you only like fog lights for looks and you run them in clear conditions. in which case, see above. stupid.

halogen lamps are a subset of incandescent. most if not all interior lamps are not halogen, they are incandescent and low power.

if you think blue light looks nice, that's fine... but you should realize that there are only a handful of reasons why LEDs are 'better' and none of those apply to a car that was designed for incandescents in the first ten years of use.

1. longevity
led's last a long time when they are high quality and shielded from the elements properly. when they're not, they do fail and generally the super cheap ones are cheap for a reason- high quality costs more.

2. power usage
led's are very efficient, and don't have as much thermal output so more of the input gets converted to light. however, the power usage has to be specifically designed into the eletrical system. if you just place an LED into a system that is used to pulling the type of power a small, efficient incandescent bulb pulls, it will likely not use any less power, especially with a resistor, the resistor will eat up the rest of the power. that's its job.

3. looks/aethetic
leds have a different wavelength and spectrum and generally a different quality of light to them. they are generally lower in spectrum coverage as most of these 'cool white' leds are just blue leds with some nasty chemical filters over them to make them appear whiter. i say nasty because the ways they make these are more noxious and toxic even than incandescents, which require tons of mining and toxic manufacturing themselves. a lot of people don't like the yellowish white of an incandescent because it gives a calmer, more 'fire-like' dim feeling, even if it's not dimmer.

the thing is... the car is designed for a particular type of bulb. putting in LEDs to an incandescent system can work quite well but it can also be a HUGE problem with spotty/uneven gauges and intense light that is generally counter-productive to night vision and being able to see well outside of the car.

longevity: incandescent lights are such low power, they're going to last ten years or more. they will be cheap to replace. you can replace them one at a time. you aren't going to have to worry about their quality because they're oem. LED's can fail at any time just from getting too hot. maybe you leave your heater on and just because of how the air is blowing inside the cabin, it fries your leds. or maybe not. but this isn't a reason to do a conversion, especially less than five years off the lot.

power usage - not going to help. the alternator's draw isn't going to be affected, there are no noticeable energy savings.

looks - i think it looks dumb. at worst, you will have lights that fail without warning and you won't be able to adjust brightness the way you can with incandescents. at best, you have blue lights. gross.

So why do people like this? because you want to have a high end bmw? so stupid. I did an LED conversion on my impreza, it's the worst thing i've done and i'm very unhappy with it. gauges are all sorts of unevenly lit, and one led went out near the HVAC.

also, for LED fog lights i'd be concerned about color rendering indexes, even those CREE XM-L will have a very hard time cutting through fog and it will be harder to see by them through fog conditions.
unless, you only like fog lights for looks and you run them in clear conditions. in which case, see above. stupid.

Sorry you had a bad experience with the Impreza, I, like yourself, did a half-ass job of doing a conversion in my first car. So I could see how you could think it was bad when you had spotty gauging and a bad one near the HVAC. But after using quality LEDs from reputable distributors, I haven't had any problems that you've discussed. Regarding you comment about shielding from the elements, most of the leds I would plan to change are either in the cabin or in some enclosure. Personally, like I mentioned before, I just like them. Even as you described it as a fire-like incandescent, I prefer something crisp and clean. Currently, the cool white I have now is not so blue as you would think. It's more white than anything, and no I think it is free of any harmful chemicals.

i did it myself. if i had simply done a subpar job and others were able to make it evenly lit, i would feel differently. every one i've seen is worse than OEM... and paying someone else to do it is ridiculous, how much money do you want to waste on having LED lighting?

but that wasn't my point. my point was why do it besides 'it looks cool'?

There are people that can make them evenly lit. Like you said you did a bad job and were too cheap to pay someone to do it. "It looks cool" and "It goes faster" are pretty much the two reasons people do any modifications to a car...

White LEDs consist of a blue diode (usually InGaN) with a coating of synthetic garnet (Yttrium-Aluminum-Garnet) over the diodes in that absorbs some of the naturally blue light coming out of the diode and emits it at a lower energy state (longer wavelength, yellowish specifically). The combination of these wavelengths appears white to our eyes.

The coating, in and of itself, isn't toxic (and it's encased in epoxy besides). It's the massive quantity of acid and mercury that is used in the mining/extraction of Yttrium that cc700 is referring to. Mining in general is a very dirty business, mining for rare earth elements is an order of magnitude worse.

The ironic thing is, "cool white" LEDs use less Yttrium than "warm white" LEDs, and as such, are better for the environment.

Sorry you had a bad experience with the Impreza, I, like yourself, did a half-ass job of doing a conversion in my first car. So I could see how you could think it was bad when you had spotty gauging and a bad one near the HVAC. But after using quality LEDs from reputable distributors, I haven't had any problems that you've discussed. Regarding you comment about shielding from the elements, most of the leds I would plan to change are either in the cabin or in some enclosure. Personally, like I mentioned before, I just like them. Even as you described it as a fire-like incandescent, I prefer something crisp and clean. Currently, the cool white I have now is not so blue as you would think. It's more white than anything, and no I think it is free of any harmful chemicals.

:happy0180: good for you then. maybe LED's have gotten better since i did mine. fwiw, i switched back to red 'bulb covers' on incandescents. white i think would bother my eyes' night vision too much, but everyone reacts differently to light so if you think you can see well i'll let you decide what you prefer on the inside of your car, as long as you aren't compensating with hid conversions or using your high beams or anything else that bugs me on your forward lighting. (all of which would make it worse off than just keeping everything stock, or doing a retrofit but not having bright interior lighting)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Longhorn248

There are people that can make them evenly lit. Like you said you did a bad job and were too cheap to pay someone to do it. "It looks cool" and "It goes faster" are pretty much the two reasons people do any modifications to a car...

doing a good job with the 03 impreza cluster is hard work and you risk having to reset the needles or breaking them... it just wasn't worth it to me to waste more time on it. it's also not worth it to me to pay someone else to do it. call me cheap but i give more freely of my time and money to things far better and more important than cars to listen to this.

i was looking for discussion about what makes LEDs better in a car that isn't designed with them. evidently, no one wants to discuss that, they just want to talk up an inferior product(even the highest quality led conversion bulbs are an inferior product to using what the car was designed for) just because it looks cool. 'it goes faster' does not apply here. 'it increases road-feel' does not apply here. 'it's safer' does not apply here. 'it's more practical' does not apply here. 'it increases the car's utility' does not apply here. 'it makes the car more efficient' does not apply here.

just as long as you're willing to agree to that, i'm willing to say that i did a bad job trying to convert my car's interior illumination and that i'm too cheap to spend money on getting it redone when it's all just for looks anyway.

more to the point, if i get a BRZ/FR-S i will be keeping the bulbs stock. odds are if i wanted to resell it, a potential buyer would take my opinion on this over yours, and i'm happier not spending money trying to look cool.

:happy0180: good for you then. maybe LED's have gotten better since i did mine. fwiw, i switched back to red 'bulb covers' on incandescents. white i think would bother my eyes' night vision too much, but everyone reacts differently to light so if you think you can see well i'll let you decide what you prefer on the inside of your car, as long as you aren't compensating with hid conversions or using your high beams or anything else that bugs me on your forward lighting. (all of which would make it worse off than just keeping everything stock, or doing a retrofit but not having bright interior lighting)

doing a good job with the 03 impreza cluster is hard work and you risk having to reset the needles or breaking them... it just wasn't worth it to me to waste more time on it. it's also not worth it to me to pay someone else to do it. call me cheap but i give more freely of my time and money to things far better and more important than cars to listen to this.

i was looking for discussion about what makes LEDs better in a car that isn't designed with them. evidently, no one wants to discuss that, they just want to talk up an inferior product(even the highest quality led conversion bulbs are an inferior product to using what the car was designed for) just because it looks cool. 'it goes faster' does not apply here. 'it increases road-feel' does not apply here. 'it's safer' does not apply here. 'it's more practical' does not apply here. 'it increases the car's utility' does not apply here. 'it makes the car more efficient' does not apply here.

just as long as you're willing to agree to that, i'm willing to say that i did a bad job trying to convert my car's interior illumination and that i'm too cheap to spend money on getting it redone when it's all just for looks anyway.

more to the point, if i get a BRZ/FR-S i will be keeping the bulbs stock. odds are if i wanted to resell it, a potential buyer would take my opinion on this over yours, and i'm happier not spending money trying to look cool.

That was my point exactly. They are just for looks and fall into the same category as any other purely aesthetic mod that someone does to a car. For best resale value a person should leave the entire vehicle stock, but the majority of the people that are crazy enough about a car to post on a forum about it probably aren't going to do that. :happy0180:

i was looking for discussion about what makes LEDs better in a car that isn't designed with them. evidently, no one wants to discuss that, they just want to talk up an inferior product(even the highest quality led conversion bulbs are an inferior product to using what the car was designed for) just because it looks cool.

That's probably because it's a purely aesthetic thing. There's no reason to do it except "it looks cool". Although, in defense of the LED, bulb covers will by necessity block a fair amount of the light coming from an incandescent bulb, causing a dimmer than stock dashboard. Properly done, LEDs can be used to change illumination color while maintaining factory illumination levels